Rea Records Another Double With Sykes Fifth

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KRT riders Jonathan Rea and Tom Sykes finished first and fifth respectively in the second 21-lap WorldSBK race at Misano, with Rea coming from the third row of the grid to record his tenth race win of the season. Sykes ended up fifth, with a better machine set-up than he had during the first race on Saturday.

Three–time world championship Jonathan Rea had to use all his skills and determination to secure the second race win of the Misano WorldSBK weekend, and with it his third double win of the season.

Having to pass several riders, some of them after more than one attempt, Rea seized a late opportunity to take the lead from long time front-runner Michael van der Mark, Jonathan eventually won by a narrow 0.334 seconds from van der Mark, with the third placed rider Marco Melandri just 0.595 seconds from Jonathan.

Rea set the fastest lap of the race, a 1’34.944, on lap ten, after breaking free of one of the riders who started ahead of him in the race.

Sykes had been in second place from laps three to four but gradually dropped back to take fifth place and with it defend his fourth place in the championship standings.

In winning race two today, Kawasaki now has a total of 120 race wins in WorldSBK since its inception in 1988, making the Akashi manufacturer the second most successful of all time in its own right. Kawasaki leads the 2018 Manufacturers’ Standings by 59 points.

Entering the long summer break Rea has a points total of 370, Chaz Davies has 278, van der Mark 248 and Sykes 218.

With a long summer break looming, but an official test session at Portimao beforehand, the next round of the championship itself will take place at the same Portuguese venue, between the 14th and 16th of September.

Jonathan Rea, stated: “That was a super-super hard race. Yesterday I controlled the race. I could lead from the front, make my rhythm and go away. Today I could not make that in the beginning and I spent so much tyre and energy coming through the traffic. The bikes are so evenly matched now it is so hard to make a pass and make it stick. It was a hard job to track down Mikey and when I arrived I was starting to panic a little bit with five laps to go. I wanted to be in the lead by that stage and make a gap. I was worried about getting through because he was not making mistakes, but then he ran into the last corner a little bit deep, and I was able to pull alongside and outbrake him in T1. I made a lot of passes in that race and it was really hard work.”

Tom Sykes, stated: “Today was a big step in performance and we had a much better feeling with the chassis. With that we made a big step forward and it is a shame that we did not use this front fork at the beginning of the weekend. I just could not get the bike to do what I needed in some areas and I gave up a little bit of performance. In a lot of areas the bike was working really well. We just lost the edge grip, which is strange because the lap time was really consistent all race. I lost a lot of time at the beginning when I tried to push on new tyres I just could not do it. The bike performance compared to yesterday was much, much better.”